It's not every day someone tells you they've had "fun" in your uterus. This was exactly the sentiment of my (slightly disconcertingly) chipper surgeon at my follow up appointment. She said, "This case was just so cool, I loved it!!". I told her I was glad to provide her with some excitement. I had hoped that an ultrasound would be done to visually confirm that all went well, but my doc wants to wait until I'm off the post-surgical hormones to get a clear view of how my body is handling the procedure. Everything seems to have gone well though. All signs point to a success (can we all collectively knock some wood though please because you know how the Universe likes to have a giggle at my expense). 

I asked my doctor, assuming we confirm that the surgery was successful, when she thought we could try to conceive again. She said she would be comfortable with it much sooner than I expected! I stared at her holding by breath waiting for the catch. This year has not prepared me for a plan that doesn't come with significant detours, caveats, and compromises.  So I also inquired if any special precautions would be taken when I get pregnant again with regards to my newly renovated uterus. She replied "Not really". She said that she would pretty much be "downgrading me" to a "normal pregnant person". The idea of being "downgraded" to any sort of normality (whatever that means...pretty sure that's not a thing, but still...) gave me full body chills. It gave me a kind of concrete feeling of hope. Then just as she gave-eth she took-eth away a little by reminding me that there wasn't actually any guarantee that the uterine septum was the reason I miscarried in first place, but that the best we could do was remove the potential obstacle and hope for the best with my next one.  The crazy part is, I actually do feel capable of hoping for the best right now. 

Nine months ago the idea of a version of myself who could see the bright side of this would have felt like a fantasy (or a joke). Maybe you're out there reading and you just miscarried for the first time and it feels like that version of you will truly never exist. I wanted to share this little chapter of my journey because I felt the same way at many (and I mean many) stages along the way. Maybe you're not at a point where you can let yourself feel hopeful yet. That's okay. I think that's part of it. Just try to take my word (or store it in the back of your mind for later) that this day exists for you in a future you perhaps can't see yet. That applies to whatever you happen to be going through that feels never-ending or is plaguing you. Everything on Earth changes, and that goes for the pain too. 

I'm still on a road that doesn't have a clear end. There are still ups and downs and scars that I am driving away with. There are definitely so many more unknowns than knowns, but the quality of the journey keeps altering so I guess I'll just keep on driving forward and see what's next. 

In the world of infertility and pregnancy loss there are many strange and unexpected circumstances in which I never dreamed I would find myself. In fact, I was blissfully ignorant to an entire world that so many women inhabit. Now I am oh so initiated and let me tell you : it's weird. It's so very, very weird, friends.

The other day I had to go for an HSG--in case you don't know, it's this test where they shoot you up with dye under an X-Ray and see what's cooking in your uterus and fallopian tubes. I was told it was incredibly uncomfortable by several trustworthy sources (no, not just google) and so I was nervous. The details of the procedure were fairly uneventful--first take a pregnancy test (because they just like to rub it in, I guess), change into another hideous sacky hospital gown, assume a compromising position in an exam room, and have something decidedly not fun done to your insides. The physical discomfort was reduced by taking a bit more than the recommended dose of Advil beforehand (disclaimer : I'm not a doctor, I'm not a drug pusher, and I am in no way recommending going against whatever medical advice your doc gives you, but when my "sources" suggested I go to town on the ibuprofen, I did, and for me, it seemed to help). The good news was that my fallopian tubes are in great shape (in case you were losing sleep over that) with no sign of the blockage that the MRI had originally suggested. Which brings me back to this bizarre world in which I live where I utter sentences like "At least now I only have to have surgery on my uterus". But hey, one less surgical intervention? I'll take it.

The takeaway from this experience had very little to do with the actual medical details, however, and more to do with taking new steps on my continuing quest to find ways to decrease the emotional discomfort. The thing I was left turning over in my mind was the idea of how to merge this odd world (a world of tests, discovering "egg reserves" are a thing, cryptic acronyms, ovulation, surgical interventions, and the depressing purgatory vibe of old waiting-room magazines) with the world I have (for the most part) comfortably been navigating up until this point.  How do I integrate this bizarre new world that has been thrust upon me with my pre-miscarriage life? How does it become just part of business-as-usual without feeling like it is stealing a little bit of my soul? 

Here's a piece that I am adding to the puzzle of the particular predicament of integrating the two worlds : it has to do with the way the day of my HSG appointment rolled out. Chris just started a new job so he couldn't leave to accompany me to the appointment as he usually would. Mom offered to fly in, but it's really not that big of a deal and so that felt unnecessary, so everyone's favorite series regular, my best friend and platonic life partner, Jeremy, was up to the plate (that dear man has a special place in Heaven where they erase all the knowledge of my uterus that has been forced upon him over the last 6 months à la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). The day turned out to be not nearly as miserable as I had anticipated. I had visions of the collective sadness and sense memory of returning to the building where I had my D&C crashing down on me hard, but it didn't really go that way. I am just now putting together why that might have been so I can recreate it in the future. Here's what I can deduce... 

One of the keys to bringing these conflicting worlds together is to actually just go ahead and physically mash them together even if it feels unnatural at first. I didn't set aside a day just for the energy of appointment. I could have. If I had left a little more room to wallow, believe me, I would have. Instead I met Jer for coffee in the morning as we do eight billion times a week, we grabbed a bite, we laughed at the serious-looking nurse who I feared would not be able to tolerate my sass-mouth in the exam room (she turned out to be excessively lovely), we marveled at the inexplicably and heart-wrenchingly beautiful United Colors of Benetton ad that were the secretaries at the hospital Radiology Department (clearly sourced from Central Casting), I told the doctor a funny story while she sent my uterus into unpleasant contractions, and we followed it all up with strawberry frozen yogurt with rainbow sprinkles. Afterwards, Jeremy put my drowsy butt into a cab back home and instead of the slow-motion cry I expected to have while feeling like a zombie ransacked of all my sparkle, I just felt like a slightly more tired, achy version of me.  

In short, I was just myself in a weird situation instead of letting the situation shift me off my usual trajectory into weird energy. Trust me, I know it is SO not easy to find laughter and normalcy in these decidedly abnormal circumstances. I know that being in medical environments such as these can start to feel disconcertingly similar to an Invasion of the Body Snactchers scenario. There have been plenty of times I've sat in a waiting room desperately wanting to separate myself from the other downtrodden uteri present. I've wanted desperately to scream, "Just so everyone knows--I'm not like all these other women! This isn't my life! I just took a wrong turn!" However, I think a key to unlocking this whole thing may be working toward a certain acceptance that these experiences are more an innocuous part of my world and less an interloper determined to wreck my entire existence as I know it. I'm not suggesting I should brush over honoring the magnitude of the physical and emotional trauma, but I also don't have to give it all the power. I do not have to be a pod person version of myself in this storyline. I am not "That Reproductively Challenged girl". I am messy, ridiculous, optimistic, silly, emotional, sarcastic, mush-ball Becca who happens to be making a special guest appearance in the Valley of the Infertile. It is a landscape I hope to not walk forever, but as long as I am here I will continue to look for ways to claim ownership of my stay. 

When I was diagnosed with a jankity uterus (to use the medical term) I was referred to a reproductive endocrinologist/surgeon who I was told would discuss my options moving forward. Being the Type-A gal I've always been, I called immediately to schedule my appointment and get the show on the road. I was given an appointment ... two months from the date I called.  Now, maybe that's reasonable in the world of Waiting For A Manhattan Specialist Who is Really Good at Her Job but it is just NOT reasonable for Very Impatient and Anxious Foiled Mama with Eight Thousand Questions. So at first, I was a bit disheartened, but then before long I gave into the fact that the next step was simply waiting for my appointment to arrive. I love my OB and this was the surgeon that she highly recommended so I decided it was worth the wait. I got comfortable with the whole waiting thing. I took weekend trips, I had cocktails with friends where the conversation did not revolve around my tragic reproductive system, I did a lot of writing, I started remembering that I am actually pretty valuable and even fun as a person separate from all the difficulties of the last six months. 

Then the day came. The day of my long-awaited appointment. It seemed surreal that after all the anticipation, all the ignoring, all the adjusting, all the distancing, all the moving forward, all the reclaiming of my role as a wife/friend/daughter/sister, it was now time to plunge back into the role of the patient. By the time the day came I was completely dreading what I had been praying would speed toward me just a few weeks earlier (I'm just so very hard to please, aren't I?). By the time the appointment came around I wasn't even sure what I wanted anymore. I knew I wanted a baby in the ever-present aching way that I had become accustomed to, but climbing another mountain toward said baby seemed more than I could wrap my head around. Just when I had let my hyper vigilant mommy shield down, it was time to go back into battle. I met a dear friend (the one who has been through all this garbage too) at a cafe before the appointment and broke down in tears the second she sat down. "You're just going to let the doctor give you information" she told me and it helped calm me down. Sitting down and gathering information. Alright. That seemed civilized. I could do that.

The appointment did begin in a quite civilized manner but gained speed like a tornado and ended up whipping us into an all-consuming vortex. I went in prepared simply to talk about surgery to correct my uterine septum and left with knowledge of a potential blocked fallopian tube, an appointment for a (quite uncomfortable, i'm told) HSG test, and down 12 vials of blood which were waiting to be analyzed for everything from genetic markers for disease to insufficient ovulation. All of a sudden we were scheduling a sperm analysis and bandying around terms like In Vitro Fertilization if X, Y, and Z happened to go wrong. Whoa whoa whoa whoa WHOA!!!!! I thought. I just barely wrapped my mind around this whole having to have surgery for a separated uterus thing! It was clear we were not in Kansas anymore. 

I left the appointment feeling flooded with the very information I thought would be comforting. My only life raft was the systematic plan that the doctor had laid out. The plan is complex and filled with PS's, Also's, and caveats (I won't bore you with those), but I tried to boil all the elements down to the very bare minimum : 1. do the HSG to make sure my fallopian tubes don't need intervention, 2. schedule uterine surgery, 3. recover, and 4. try again. Being the natural born worrier that I am I scoured the plan for actionable items. What can I do to make this go smoother, quicker, more successfully?? And then it hit me. There is NOTHING I can do. All I can do is put myself in the right hands (check), have a basic, but not neurotic level of information to be an informed self-advocate (check, for the most part, although some of this stuff has made me seriously doubt my understanding of the human body), and show up when I have an appointment (have you seen my planner?! check!!). 

It turns out the biggest actionable item on my part is reminding myself that no amount of googling, or fretting, or obsessing will change the plan. For better or for worse, this is the situation that I am in and now I just have to continue checking off boxes until that baby is in my arms. There will be plenty to do then I hear. Ideally I will get to a point where I can even luxuriate in the feeling of everything being out of my hands. I'm shooting for a very zen, Buddha take the wheel approach to this one. 

The interesting part that perhaps some of you can relate to, is that in the midst of all these things that I cannot control, there are a great number of things I actually can control that feel insurmountable (or simply uninteresting) in the face of all the medical commotion. For example, I could be developing a really on-point workout plan to lose the last of that post-miscarriage depression weight, I could be writing these blog posts well in advance instead of scrambling at the last minute, I could be kicking my private practice into hyper-drive. However, focusing on the things I can't control keeps stealing focus from those I can. Call it being human, call it just being ME, but I think finding a way to switch this imbalance of allocated energy is a big part of the work of moving forward. There is a fresh frontier of gray area between being gentle with myself and letting myself off the hook that I continue to butt up against and weed-whack through.  I'll keep on finding ways to transfer my desire to take control to those things I actually can control and as I do you better believe I'll continue to report back from the frontline. 

I'm sick and tired of thinking about miscarriage and babies and fertility. I'm tired of my emotions being dictated by it. I'm tired of the look I see on my friends faces when they gear up to be supportive once again. I fear (possibly based on paranoia rather than reality) that everyone is sick of hearing about it, but the truth is that no one is more sick of it than I am.

I'd like nothing more than to let it go. In fact, armies of 4 year-old girls obsessed with the movie Frozen seem to be belting at me to "Let it Go" every day. I'd love to oblige. Truly. Because this stinks (and their off-key toddler singing is loud and hurts my ears). However many factors seem to be conspiring against this goal. 

Two months after my miscarriage my pregnancy hormone levels were still not reading negative. My OB was following my levels to rule out a partial molar pregnancy (still is, actually).  She told me the drop was admittedly quite slow, but nothing to be particularly concerned about as long as they were consistently trending down. It seemed that my body was quite literally refusing to let go and clutching desperately to this pregnancy. I became best friends with the lovely nurse who drew my blood every week. She wears bright red lipstick and always compliments my shoes. We have a schtick about the weekly blood draw being our fun little tradition. She talks about her son and I talk about how my week went. It is usually a surprisingly cheerful part of my day even though it involves getting poked with a needle. I brought both Chris and Jer in to meet her so I guess that means she's now officially in my crew. We hug like old friends. So, letting it go seems increasingly out of the question as this little show and its players have firmly woven themselves into my day-to day. They are so much the fabric of my life right now that I can no longer pretend they are something separate. 

For a long while, I would give a weekly report to my nearest and dearest that pregnancy hormones were still surging through me. We'd usually have a snarky banter that went something like "well, we could have told them that" referencing the fact that I was still acting totally bonkers on a fairly frequent basis. I could just as easily laugh giddily about this as break down in spirit crushing sobs. It was anyones guess which it would be (don't I sound delightful?). They say postpartum sadness is unspeakably hard when the pregnancy results in a baby, and I was completely unprepared for the effect it would have when the pregnancy resulted in me being alone with my thoughts. The hormonal free-fall and consequent sluggishly resolving chemical imbalance wreaked havoc on my ability to emotionally move forward. 

This experience has refused to let go of me in more unexpected and cunning ways as well. This was made abundantly clear when I had to go get an MRI to rule out a uterine septum (SPOILER ALERT : I have an almost total one! which means more antiseptic-soaked surgery blog posts to come before carrying a baby is even an option for me. So basically I am in the Olympics of reproductive malfunction and I'm gunning for the gold in several categories). In the days before the MRI I found myself a total wreck. This was not uncharacteristic in general (please refer to the lingering pregnancy hormones), but it was out of the ordinary as it pertains to a simple MRI. I nearly started hyperventilating talking about it over coffee one day. I worked in an intensive care unit for years, for goodness sake, and thought I was almost fully desensitized to most routine medical interventions. Turns out there was some definite post traumatic D&C effects lingering in me that sprung to life at the thought of another IV, another allergic reaction to hospital tape, another runway walk in a scratchy light blue gown and grippy socks. 

This whole experience has burrowed down deep and rears its ugly head when I least expect it.  There are still pregnancy website email pop-ups to which I can't bring myself to unsubscribe. On a day that happened to coincide with two births in my family, I got a very conspicuous email announcing  "Congrats! You're in your second trimester! Start telling the world!". I know I set myself up for that sucker punch because I have complained in the past about how cruelly relentless and annoying those emails are and I could have easily stopped them by now, but I haven't. Part of me also still wants to see them. This part of me defiantly and stubbornly doesn't want to make it easier to forget. Maybe I am not ready to release the parallel universe version of myself that is now moving through the normal stages of a healthy pregnancy.

I guess the heart of the matter is, there is too much focus on letting go. I've been guilty of slipping into the false sense that the end goal is a version of me who does not think about my miscarriage. Moving "ever forward" is not about detaching from what happened, it's about learning to carry the weight of this experience with increasing dexterity and humor. It is about allowing the sadness to be present, but not chaining myself to it and giving it all the power. The sadness and pain deserve honor and respect because moving through those emotions is what is shaping me into a stronger version of myself. 

It is less about letting it go and more about letting it be.

What my pregnancy process confirmed is that not-knowing is ten-times more frightening than bad news. I suppose I always knew this, but never have I felt it so acutely. 

The morning I went in for my follow up ultrasound I felt like the world had been drained of oxygen. I was frozen with fear as snow pelted down and I took a slow motion cab ride uptown to the hospital. I had prayed and prayed for the week from Hell to speed by, but as it did, and as I got closer to the day of my appointment the dread built to a fever pitch. Would my greatest fears be confirmed or would I be given back hope? Keeping positive energy flowing felt like a battle and I was never more than a deep breath away from sobbing. 

The way it all unfolded felt quite unremarkable for all the drama and build leading up to it. I felt oddly grateful that the ultrasound room was less foreign this time although the silence of it was still deafening. I stripped from the waist down and draped myself with a scratchy hospital gown. As I sat on the exam table I sent a last-ditch effort blast of positive energy toward my uterus. I steeled myself for what was to come and leaned back. When the ultrasound tech told me to hold my breath I was confused, first of all, because I was sure I hadn’t breathed in days anyway, and secondly, because they did not ask me to do this at my last appointment. I focused my eyes on the screen perched above me to see something flickering on the screen. They were asking me to hold my breath so they could count the beats. Even though intellectually I knew that flicker on the monitor was a heartbeat--the thing I had longed so desperately to see--I could not accept it. Chris squeezed my hand and lifted his eyebrows in excitement, but I returned his glance with what can only be described as deer-in-the-headlights eyes. I simply wouldn’t let myself feel excited because I was so desperately trying to protect myself. 

Another ultrasound tech entered cheerfully stating “sometimes it’s nice to have a second set of eyes”. I wasn’t buying. Something was wrong. I felt it. The doctor came in and with a tentative look said the baby was there, but measuring two weeks behind what they would expect at my calculated eight and a half weeks and that the heartbeat was a bit slow. "Slow for six weeks or for eight?" I asked trying desperately to piece things together. Then the doctor said that the “other sac” now appeared to be empty and not viable. I stared at him like he was suddenly speaking Mandarin. “The other sac?” I managed to choke out. Apparently this was a twin pregnancy that no one bothered to mention to me at the last ultrasound because they were pretty sure I was miscarrying. My mind was beyond blown. I laugh now remembering that I asked, "Is that normal!?". I guess it took my dumbfounded self a moment to recognize that two sacs meant twins. The doctor chuckled humorlessly and said, "Well we see it all the time".  A wave of foggy information washed over me about something called Vanishing Twin where one sac ends up being reabsorbed or miscarried and the other one usually goes on to develop normally. I was only half able to hear. In an instant I was forced to simultaneously process that I was pregnant with twins, but now I am not. More waiting was prescribed. We’d know better how the remaining embryo was doing in ten days I was told. Ten more days of limbo.

When we walked into the waiting room my mom leapt up and asked for the report. We told her and she looked overjoyed to hear there was a heartbeat. I wanted to be excited too, but anger came out instead and I brusquely insisted we should not get our hopes up. I told my sister and closest friends and everyone's instantly positive outlook felt like a threat to my tightly-gripped delusions of rationality and neutrality about the matter. It took days for the icy defense mechanism to melt away and before I decided to give myself permission to feel hopeful. There was nothing there before and now there was a heartbeat. That was a clearcut move in the right direction. I was even able to fairly quickly make my peace with the fact that the one twin was never meant to develop. All my energy was turned toward "The Shrimp" as we affectionately nicknamed the embryo. 

So those ten days of waiting took on a different quality. During the previous week of waiting, it hurt too much to acknowledge even in the smallest way that I was pregnant for fear that it just wasn't true.  During the ten day waiting period, however, I knew that I was pregnant and whether it was for the next eight months or the next eight minutes, no one could take that fact away from me.  There was a heart beat flickering away inside my body. I let myself lovingly rest my hand on my belly, I allowed myself to take small glances at the pregnancy apps on my phone, and I unlocked fantasies of baby names, cribs, and due dates. I let myself refer to the baby like I knew she was coming and it felt good. 

If you search the annals of history and pop culture, you would be hard pressed to find substantial evidence of a sad moment in a old fashioned soda shoppe. It’s just not documented, because there is no reason for it to exist. Drinking a milkshake served to you by a fresh-faced kid in a white cap is empirically a joyful experience. However as we three sat in the corner of the perfectly restored and playfully old-timey Brooklyn soda shoppe, its inherent joyfulness lay on our collective chest like a ten-ton weight. The only thing I can think of that would have been more sad than the three of us in that soda shoppe was if I had been alone there. That was around the day when all babies took on a decidedly smug attitude and started glaring at me. This I could almost handle because, lets face it, babies have a certain well-fed smugness to them anyway that we all engage in an unspoken social contract to ignore. It was their pity I couldn’t stand--their tiny, swaddled, milk-scented pity. I swear a baby wrapped snugly in a sling plunked himself down across from me in a cafe and just sadly shook his head “no”. 

I should back up--to the moment when I peed on not one, not two, but six pregnancy test sticks. To the moment where I stood alone in my tiny bathroom starting at these fortune-telling sticks and they all beamed back up at me a resounding YES. YES! the thing that you have wanted since you were a little girl is happening. YES! it is terrifying and wonderful. YES! your body really DOES work the way it is supposed to after all. YES! to a happy new year. YES! to things falling into place. YES YES YES!  I always thought I would scream, and cry, and jump up and down clutching Chris joyfully, but my reaction was much more internal and subdued. Instead of a triumphant outward celebration, I quietly began to allow myself to believe in steps-- I let myself acknowledge that my body felt different, I let myself realize we really could fit a crib in the room with us, I let myself fantasize about this little miracle that was cooking inside of me, I allowed myself dreams of her little cheeks and hands and her smell. And then in the darkened room of my first-ever ultrasound after being poked and probed and prodded, I was told I may have allowed myself to believe too soon. I was told that this was most likely a miscarriage. We would know definitively in a week they said. And so began the longest week of my life that was kicked off by an afternoon of “walking around like zombies” (as my best friend Jeremy later described it) that lead us to that fateful soda shoppe. 

That day was the hardest I had experienced to date. The world skipped and jumped and raced around me as I moved in slow agonizing motion with the sound muted like I was underwater. My entire world hung in the balance while people selected books in the bookstore, bought tickets to movies, gathered groceries for dinner, and drank milkshakes. Looking back, I really only remember a foggy outline of the day. I know that I walked like I was moving through honey with Chris on one side of me and Jeremy on the other. I remember that day in black and white and blurred around the edges. That day faded into a night where I woke up repeatedly thinking it was all a dream only to remember it wasn’t and to cry myself back to sleep. 

Each day from there got a bit easier as I realized that hope was not lost and I could not surrender to thinking it was. It could have been a miscalculation, it could be a mistake, it could be so many things. There was a thin line to walk between the power of positive thinking and not wanting to make myself vulnerable by ignoring the potential worst case scenario. Impossible as it seemed, I managed to get into a place where more often than not, I believed in a miracle. I had just as much reason to believe things would work out wonderfully as terribly. I renewed my faith in my body and it’s power. I did all that I could to renew my faith that the Universe would make things happen how they were meant to happen. I let myself joke and be distracted. My mom flew in to put a blanket of comfort around my entire apartment and me within it. I ate the foods I craved with no guilt for the first time in my life. I read stories of mothers who had been told all hope was lost, but lived to see otherwise. I surrounded myself with people who I am lucky to say love me to an unfathomable degree. And I waited. There were days when I walked around in a fog and days where I laughed like life was normal. It was a strange sensation to live through a week that you knew ultimately would not matter in the history of your life. I would either look back on that week as the week before something wonderful or terrible happened ...or before more of the same happened. That week was the closest thing I have ever done to putting my entire life on pause. I ate. I napped. My mother dusted my bookshelves and organized my cabinets. Dear friends drifted in and out knowing there was nothing to say. I engaged in an epic battle against the magical thinking notion that if I let myself get negative, the worst would happen. It stood to reason that if I could convince myself to be truly positive, the best would unfold.

One thing I knew is that I had no choice but to move forward. Ever forward. Whether it was against my will or not I had to wake up every day and breathe and allow myself to be open to what was next.